Dr. Nicole Cain explains how to build a panic pack: a portable collection of tools like fidgets, a cold pack, and breathing techniques to manage acute anxiety. The four-square breath (4-count inhale, hold, exhale, hold) and bubble-blowing to lengthen your exhale are quick grounding methods for situations like flights or dentist visits.
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One of the things I love in this book is this idea about your panic pack. And this little, it becomes like, I think, a comfort object for people. Can you talk us through what the panic pack is and how you would put that together?
This pleasure? It's glittery because panic and anxiety and our mental emotional well being doesn't have to feel sterile and yucky. And so I'm all about reclaiming it. And I like shiny, sparkly things. So I made my very first panic pack was a hot pink sequined fanny pack that I wore. And it was a necessity. I was terrified of flying. And the gift of the panic pack is that it puts together all the goodies that research has shown to be really helpful for coping with anxiety in the moment. And let's face it, we can't all do all of the inner child work. We can't all do all of the environmental audits. Sometimes we just have to get through it and say, okay, alarm, I hear you. I honor you. We're going to work through this together. And right now we just need to calm ourselves so that we can stay focused on the task at hand. And the panic pack is good for that. So let's peek inside and I'll teach you quickly about some of the goodies in a panic pack. Okay. So some of the things that you're going to want to think about if your body is getting activated are those things that stimulate scent or touch or textures or taste. And so anything that you can do to get back in the body, your breath is always with you. So we want to incorporate that too. So here are just a few things. I love my other panic pack in Arizona, because you need panic packs where you go, so get some fidgets. We see kids using fidgets all the time. And oftentimes kids know what their body needs to regulate. And so touching, noticing the feeling of the texture. This is stretchy. I have another fidget here that's a little bit spinny. It's kind of fun. My favorite fidget is the spiky fidget. I just had a dentist appointment and I knew he's going to be injecting a really sharp numbing needle. And I hate that it feels really, very stressed about it. And so providing a counter stimulus that's as big as the one that you're worried about or bigger can be very, very helpful. So while putting my face in an ice cold bucket may have worked really well, you can't do that when a dentist is in your face. So there are other fidgets that can Be useful for that. And they're so inexpensive, and, y', all, they're great stocking stuffers. So fidgets are really good. And another thing that's really great is your breath. So when you did the Salience Network hack, we were rotating our head, but we're also working with the breath. And the research shows that your vagus nerve, not to be mistaken for the city in Nevada where we go and gamble, this is vagus, as in wandering in Latin. It's the longest nerve in the body. And when we stimulate that nerve, it shifts the body into calm. In fact, too much vagus stimulation can put us into a vasovagal reaction where we pass out. We're so calm, we pass out. Not in a pleasant way. Right. So we want to stimulate the vagus nerve, and one of the ways we can do that is the breath. Kids, if you have any young people in your life and adults, let's be real, because I love bubbles. When you blow bubbles, you slow down the exhale, because if you're hyperventilating, you can't blow a good bubble. And then you're getting the pursing of the lips, the slowing of the breath. You blow the bubbles, you get to see the outcome and the effect of that. And so one of the things that you can do is to just elongate the exhale. In the book I teach about the four square breath, sometimes it's nice to have just a visual. Like, don't tell me, just to breathe. How. How do I breathe? And why does it work? So the four square breath, you inhale for four counts, you draw that bottom, and then you hold your breath at the top for four counts, and then you exhale for four counts or more. If you can get it, the longer the better. And then you hold your breath at the very bottom. And when I do this with my clients, I've done this on some podcast interviews, is I like to teach people how to find their pulse in their wrist. And if you're able to do that, I would love for you to practice feeling the change in your heart rate, because as you breathe in, you're going to activate sympathetic, which will make your heart rate go a little faster. So we breathe in, then you hold your breath at the top. My heart rate's speeding up. But then if you slow down and really exhale as long and as deliciously as possible, your heart rate will slow down. And for me, the proof is in the pudding. I like that. Biofeedback. So those are a couple things that you can include in the panic pack. Another thing that I don't have with me that I think is really valuable are when you get a first aid pack. You can get a chemical pack that it's small, you can put it in your glove box, you could put it in your purse, your pocket, your desk. And then when you shake it up, it gets cold with a chemical reaction. And then you can place that over your eyes, your chest, the back of your neck. So if you are sitting at your desk and you start noticing you're panicking, that's a really quick go to. That would be if you only picked one thing that might be the number one hack. So that's a little bit about the panic pack.
